2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10 February 18, 2026
The
challenge in preaching Ash Wednesday is the same challenge that clergy face on
Christmas. It’s the same readings year
after year. This year I thought I had a
great new take on Joel and then realized that was exactly what I preached last
year. In previous years, I have preached about why we put ashes on our head
even though the Gospel reading tells us not to disfigure our faces. My theory is that it’s actually an admission
of our own hypocrisy, which is a good and heathy thing to admit. We are all hypocrites about something in our
lives. I have preached that amazing line
from Joel, “rend your hearts and not your clothing.” What I have never preached on is 2nd
Corinthians, partly because it doesn’t seem to really belong in Ash
Wednesday…at least not as clearly as the others.
Yet I
found myself coming back to the last two verses of this text from 2nd
Corinthians over and over. “We are
treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as
dying, and see-- we are alive; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet
making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.” One of the things that I love about Paul (who
is the individual who wrote 2nd Corinthians and much of the New
Testament) is his humanity. We see his
insecurities and his defensiveness close up.
If the Bible was written today, this would have been so highly edited
and polished, we would not hear any of the phrases that make the great heroes
of the Bible accessible and relatable. While the Bible has been translated
thousands of times, the word still retains the truth of the people who wrote
it.
Paul
was clearly getting some push back from the people of Corinth. His mission was
to spread the Gospel far and wide, so he moved from place to place, never
staying terribly long. He was in Corinth
a little longer than he was in other places, about a year and half, but in the
grand scheme of things, that’s not a very long time. After he left, other
religious leaders stepped in and seemed to have contradicted Paul’s message,
probably offering another path, an easier path.
Since Paul didn’t know Jesus personally, people used his lack of first
hand knowledge to undermine his message.
Thus we see him defending himself quite a bit in his
letters. Here he provides us a list of
the hardships he has endured as well as his virtues. It was a common rhetorical technique at the
time---listing hardships and virtues. This list almost seems to be doing what
the Gospel tells us not to do—practicing one’s piety before others. Then again, maybe he didn’t have a
choice. For people to believe the
message he was sharing, they had to believe the messenger. Still I find it fascinating that this man who
accomplished so much was just a little insecure.
Let
me return to those lines that first got my attention. I get excited when I see
the phrase “and yet” in the Bible. It
usually speaks to a tension…often between what we are experiencing now and what
will we experience in God’s kingdom. It
speaks to that primal hope---even though things are rough now, it’s going to
get better. In this reading, it speaks
to another tension of how others perceive us (or how we think they perceive us)
as compared to the way that God perceives us.
“We
are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known;”
I have known a fair amount of people with imposter syndrome. I assume some degree of it is normal. Yet it concerns me when I see it in
Christians—people of faith fearful of calling themselves a Christian. It’s sometimes because they don’t believe
everything, or because they have a past they are not proud of, or maybe a
present they aren’t proud of.
People have told me, “if you really knew me, you
wouldn’t think I belong here.” I always tell them, I don’t need to know all of
you to know that you belong here. Because God knows all of you. Church isn’t a
finishing school for Christians who are 90% there and just trying to get to
100%. It’s for anyone who is ready to
admit that they have fallen short and they want to be better. It is for anyone
who wants to deepen or explore their faith. It’s for people who want to know
Jesus. Paul knew what it was to be treated as an imposter. Jewish people thought he had failed as a
rabbi. Many Christians knew he had persecuted Christians and were still not
convinced he was a real Christian. But
he knew that in God’s eyes he was true.
It didn’t matter that no one knew him entirely because God knew all of
him and still loved him.
We are “dying, and see-- we are alive” This is the line that belongs on Ash
Wednesday. In just a few minutes, I will put ashes on your forehead and remind
you of your mortality…that you are dust and to just you will return. Yet while we are all dying (at different
rates), we are still very much alive, no matter if you are 25 of 85. You are still alive. That is a precious
thing. It also comes with a certain
responsibility. What will you do with this beautiful life you have been given? How can you serve God and God’s people?
We are “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” Life is really hard and often depressing. If you are aware of the things going on around
you, it would be impossible not be a little sad. We could go around bemoaning
the state of the world 100% of the time, or we could find times and ways to
rejoice—not because we are ignoring the suffering, but because we still have a
loving God and there is always some place where we can find joy. Even on Ash
Wednesday, we rejoice because we have a God who loves us unconditionally.
We are “poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing,
and yet possessing everything.” We have
all seen the people who have everything they need and more, but are still
desperate to acquire more stuff. They are never content with what they have. We
see it in our culture way too much. We
have also seen people who have just what they need and somehow seem to have
more than enough to give. Their life is one of abundance. God looks at us and
see us as more than enough. You are more than enough.
Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent. You could look at Lent and see the penitence
and the focus on sin and say, “Oh God, not again. There is too much suffering,
I don’t need any more. I don’t need more reasons to feel bad about
myself.” And yet….we could look at this
as an opportunity to see the person that God sees…to chip away at the residue
that has hardened around your heart and see yourself as a beloved child of God
who has these 40 days to draw closer to God, to create a clean heart and be the
person who God has created you to be. That is what Lent offers each one of us,
a new beginning.
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